10

I want to compare two folders, each having about 5-6 thousands files and folders. Among these probably 0.1% would be actually different but WinMerge first shows all files saying "text files are different" and when I open these files one by one it opens a dialog saying contents in both files are the same. It is nearly impossible for me to find files actually having different text, in this way.
First, I tried to set options but no success.
Then, I thought this initial difference may be due to different time stamps. So I made all file time stamps (create, last modified and last accessed ) exactly the same but the result is the still same.
Am I missing something? Or is there any way to filter the list so that I may see only the files with some difference? Or any other idea?

Des Horsley
  • 307
  • 3
  • 15

5 Answers5

14

I would have thought that WinMerge with the following settings would work:

image

If it doesn't, I would ask the question in their forums.
I believe this is worth the effort, as WinMerge is my best file-compare product.

Gaff
  • 18,569
  • 15
  • 57
  • 68
harrymc
  • 455,459
  • 31
  • 526
  • 924
2

Try setting the Compare option "Ignore carriage return differences".

Differences in line endings (CRLF/CR/LF) are the usual suspect when one mode of comparison (binary) reports differences but another mode (text) claims that the files are the same.

Brian Nixon
  • 562
  • 2
  • 10
  • Its already like this. –  Aug 09 '10 at 22:03
  • You are right @brian, there is really a line feed difference in most of the files that winmerge is not ignoring in first pass. –  Aug 10 '10 at 02:46
1

I had the same problem with WinMerge 2.14. So I tried WinMerge 2.16.2, problem solved.

dog44wgm
  • 131
  • 1
  • 5
1

Try with the software called 'Beyond Compare'.

Jonathan Rioux
  • 367
  • 1
  • 6
  • 12
  • 1
    its not free... – om471987 Aug 20 '13 at 22:58
  • 1
    Seems to be a good one, but I had to change a few settings (essentially, removing the quick compare rules on *file size* & *timestamp*) to avoid having the "not so different files" highlit in my compare. The fact that it's non-free isn't that much of a problem, since a 30 days trial is available (and this soft is probably worth the few bucks it costs), but it raises a few uncertainties about the available functionnalities if one isn't intending to spend money on it. – Balmipour Jan 11 '18 at 16:39
0

You might want to try ECMerge or Araxis as well. They both have appropriate settings to ignore spaces / CRLF.

Armel
  • 1